'New game plus' mode for WoW alt levelling.

I'm going to attempt to refine an idea I brought up in a different thread regarding the current state of alt levelling, and how I think it could change for the better. There are calls from some to eliminate the alt levelling grind altogether, whereas others insist it's a valid and enjoyable part of the game, or that to eliminate it would diminish the achievement of having several level capped toons. Broadly speaking, I fall in the middle of all this. I do think alt levelling is a worthwhile pursuit that should remain, but I also think that once the novel parts of the grind are expended (pretty quickly) it is way too long and basically unfun.

What if WoW embraced alt levelling as a gameplay medium a little more consciously? Actually they have to a certain extent; accountwide mounts and achievements definitely plays to enhancing and adding value to alt levelling. So do Heirlooms. But what else could really make alt levelling a *enjoyable* thing to do- something that doesn't chew all your time on long monotonous grinds through content you've ground and reground before?

Alt levelling dailies.

I got the idea for alt levelling dailies by accident- I levelled a 'loomed toon up to 80, at which point his 'looms stopped working. Combined, the slower levelling with the drastically 'longer' levels resulted in a harp drop in the rate of progress, and a temporary loss of interest on my part. Rather than finish the job, I went to level other toons decked out in heirlooms. However, the lvl 80 toon was high enough level to be doing argent tournament; each day I would log in, farm champion seals, and work towards cool mounts and pets I hadn't yet earned. When I finally came back this level 80 toon to bring him up to lvl 90, he had earned a bunch of mounts and was now sitting pretty at level 86. Sweet!

My idea takes this happy accident and formally shapes it into the game. My proposal is as follows:

1) Once you reach level cap and get the level cap achievement, Blizz sends you a complimentary heirloom trinket in the mail along with an invitation to roll an alt and enjoy new-game-plus (henceforth NGP) mode. You only get this once, when you earn the achievement.

2) Starting zones are basically tutorials, I think that upon talking to the very first noobtrainer/quest giver in NGP mode, you see a new dialogue option to skip the starting experience and advance straight to level 10 ("You look like you've got a bit of experience already, why don't you head on over to Razor Hill now, they need heroes like you"). 10 levels sounds like a lot, but it's not really- you're saving the player about an hour of remedial playtime (not much different to giving them a dozen or so honor or justice), and letting them skip right to the part where they pick their spec and really start levelling.

3) Alt levelling dailies. Every Zone has questing hubs, in NGP mode unlock 3 new dailies in each zone. They are mutually exclusive; doing all three in Durotar means the dailies are no longer offered in the Northern Barrens (or anywhere else). These dailies payout generously in experience. With more than 70 zones to be levelled through, this would scale pretty rapidly into an impractically huge task. Accordingly, to keep the scope of this suggestion restrained, these dailies are actually just templates superimposed onto each zone, mostly not unique quests. The three daily types are as follows:

I.The Scavenger Hunt.

The scavenger hunt works a bit like 'where in the world is Carmen Sandiago'. Basically the Player is given clues to find 5 items, NPCs, or locations of interest within the zone. Speedy completion is rewarded with bonus rewards; a quest buff is added at 100 stacks, and steadily sheds stacks until it is at zero- with bonus rewards based on how many stacks are left (This not only rewards players who are lore savvy, good at solving clues, and familiar with the world- but disincentivises tabbing out and searching the internet for solutions).

The 5 checkpoints of the scavenger hunt are selected at random from a pool of 20. If a player does this daily in the same zone enough to have successfully found all 20 of the possible checkpoints in that zone, then they get an account wide achievement for doing so. If they get all such achievements for every zone in the world, they get a sweet 'inspector' title.

The point of this daily is to introduce players to interesting tidbits, hidden gems, and cool locations they might have missed in the world.

II.The Boss kill

The Boss kill offers up one of three unique, level appropriate, elite boss mobs at random for the player to kill. The Boss is challenging, and presumes heirlooms.

If a player kills all three of the available bosses via this daily quest, they get an account-wide achievement. If they get all achievements like this for all zones, they get a sweet title (can't think of what, actually).

The point of this daily is to provide the challenge a lot of people feel is lacking during levelling, especially when playing in heirlooms.

III.The lore update.

The lore update is my compromise between lore fans ongoing requests for updates to old zones, and Blizzard's insistence that workload of doing so is such that it means less, higher-value, end-game content. In lore update levelling dailies, the players play through a single quest in that zone which provides some update to the current (i.e. as of the current xpac) goings-on therein. Each xpac these quests would need to be updated.

If a player does all of these lore update dailies in all zones of a continent, they get an account-wide achievement. If they get all such achievements, they get an xpac-relevant title, and access to a gnomish time dilator which allows them to change the xpac setting on these lore update daily quests- so they can go back and do past lore updates.

The point of this daily is to provide lore fans with a fine selection of current developments in different zones without forcing them to read some book, or forcing Blizz to invest loads of time and money in actually 're-doing' the zone.

4) an Alt levelling faction with rep and currency. Not only will the Alt levelling dailies will payout generously in experience, they'll give reputation and faction currency for a unique Horde/Alliance alt-levelling faction. The factional quartermaster will have cool mounts, pets, vanity items, and heirlooms (both PvP and PVE) for sale.

Endgame

For the average player, and alt-levelling new game plus mode like this would mean you could passively level an alt at a steady rate simply by logging in and doing several dailies, whilst also earning cool new rewards, getting fresh lore, and being introduced to hidden gems in Azeroth you might've missed. For the powerleveller, regular xp grinding isn't off the table, this just works alongside that offering a nice boost each day, nice rewards, and a way to earn more heirlooms whilst levelling.

As far as pacing goes, if each quest equated to a level up, then doing your levelling dailies and your levelling dailies only would equate to roughly a month before you were 85 and ready for MoP. If powerlevelling to 85 took you a week, doing these dailies each of the seven days would mean 21 'freebie' levels in total- taking a substantial slice out of your grind to the top. I'm speaking generally here- a levelup per quest wouldn't be as appropriate for BC, Wrath and Cata levels as it is for Vanilla. You get the idea, though.

I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on this; criticism, feedback, and so on.

---------- Post added 2013-05-08 at 05:16 PM ----------

Just had an extra idea for a daily levelling quest which would stimulate novel and interesting playthrough of old WoW content. A skill quest, not unlike the DMF. The crafting quest asks you to craft a level appropriate item, from an unusual level appropriate material which drops from a specific mob in the zone (deviate scales, for example). The gathering version would again be similar to DMF with a level appropriate skill prerequisite.

The point being to get some old school irrelevant crafting happening again.

Problem with leveling dailies is that they'll become boring extremely fast. Reason why people are bored of leveling IS because they've done all the leveling zones multiple times. Dailies will at first be interesting, but after a couple of days it'll get really boring.

Leveling 1-80 is already very fast with heirlooms. They just need to change all heirlooms to work until level 90, that's all. We're six months into the expansion; anyone using it for their first character leveling 80-90 will be someone coming back to the game and that subscription is a huge win anyway.

i dont enjoy being gated behind dailies. this idea would make it almost the mandatory way to level alts, except that you can only do 3 of them a day. meaning for 20 mins im entertained, but now i cant level quickly and have to wait till tomorrow. if i wanna spend 6 hours leveling by dailies and get as far as i can before i get sleepy. then so be it. im tired of being held back because of dailies.

if i want to consume an area of content in one sitting, i should be able to. Blizzard needs to add multiple things to do, and quit gating them behind dailies.

Originally Posted by ablib

I do realize that this is an internet forum full of morons, however in real life, no one questions me, people look to me for the answer, look up to me, trust me. To have dipshits on a video game forum question me, is insulting.

And here I thought we would be talking about an option to downscale a toon (or upscale the zones) in order to request all the zones without things dieing because they touched you. and gain the full gold reward etc, of doing max level quests.

On first read, I like this idea a little. The dailies cannot be more efficient than traditional leveling though, otherwise no one will ever go out and level in the world. It has to be slower than actual leveling, but more of a "here's something different for you" method. You level slower by doing "dailies" (not liking the word dailies too much) - I think you have the right idea there - in exchange for a different kind of grind.

Personally, I really like the OP's ideas (probably because I'm an achiv whore) and makes me sad all my toons are 85+. But I can see the outrage already about "ERMAGERD MOAR DAILIES?!!!!1"

I think it'd be fun to put some challenge in leveling (be it scavenger or actual gameplay) instead of roflstomp aoe-grind your way to 80+ for the 10th time. I also really like the idea of incorporating professions/crafting leveling to keep up with alt leveling, rather than hitting max level with no profs since it's so slow to level (or being forced to grind gathering profs as you go so as not to miss the gathers in higher zones).

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

yes b/c logging in and running 2/3 dungeons everyday then logging out isnt paramount to a daily at all, you totally aren't doing a repeated event that you choose to either do every oh idk, about 24 hours or so, or ignore it...

Just because you didn't pick up a quest from a vendor doesnt mean you aren't already doing the deed.

I think it's funny how everyone heard the word dailies and started freaking out. "I'll do dungeons tyvm"....because having an OPTION to do 3 "dailies" (he explained how the various quest ideas can change on the fly to keep it more interesting than doing the EXACT same thing everyday) somehow prevents you from doing dungeons. Not to mention in his idea, he said that these "dailies" would be HUGE experience boosts, he threw out a random number of a level per quest. Yeah, a free 3 levels for 3 probably not that hard or time consuming quests is stupid, eww dailies, I <3 dungeon finder...I mean people are sitting here complaining about how it would be "grindy" as if currently the alt leveling path isn't grindy already? Especially if it's your 7th character or something? Dungeons or questing, if you've done it a lot, it's still repetitive. The word daily doesn't have to be associated with the activity for it to be something repetitive you do on a daily basis. Like holy hell people, hive mind much...

Am I the only one around here who thinks that leveling alts is easy enough? Especially with heirlooms? If anything, just let 'em make heirloom items go all the way to 90 or make a new set from 80-90. Bang, all done.

At this point people might as well be crying for 25 successive dailies to give you the option for your toon to crap out a fully-grown, level 90 alt right there on the Pandaren soil.

yes b/c logging in and running 2/3 dungeons everyday then logging out isnt paramount to a daily at all, you totally aren't doing a repeated event that you choose to either do every oh idk, about 24 hours or so, or ignore it...

Just because you didn't pick up a quest from a vendor doesnt mean you aren't already doing the deed.

this is so true, oh a dungeon i've done 20 times already, lol this is so much better than dailies, constantly killing the same mobs and faceroll bosses i've killed a dozen times already, nothing like a daily quest where i kill said mob, and 8 other mobs.....oh wait.